Norway Orders $2 Trillion Sovereign Wealth Fund to Review Investments in Israeli Firms

The Norwegian government may seek to divest its state investment fund from Israeli companies participating in the illegal occupation of the West Bank or the genocide in Gaza.

Norway's Government Pension Fund Global is worth $2 trillion and is considered the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world.

On Tuesday, following the latest reports on the "worsened situation" in Gaza—which includes mass starvation as a result of Israel's blockade of humanitarian aid—Norway's finance minister, Jens Stoltenberg, ordered the fund's ethics council to review the fund's investments in Israeli companies.

The fund came under renewed scrutiny from activists and trade unions this week after the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten reported on the fund's investments in the Israeli company Bet Shemesh Engines Holdings, which maintains the engines of fighter jets and attack helicopters that have been used to carry out devastating attacks on Gaza.

Although Norway's center-left government had determined in November 2023 that Israel's warfare in the Gaza Strip was violating international law, it only continued to increase its shares in Bet Shemesh throughout 2024, resulting in more than $15 million invested—a 2.1% stake—in the company.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said he was "very concerned" by the report and ordered Stoltenberg to contact the country's central bank to investigate.

"The war in Gaza is contrary to international law and is causing terrible suffering, so it is understandable that questions are being raised about the fund's investments in Bet Shemesh Engines," Stoltenberg said.

Norway's sovereign wealth fund has been described by Amnesty International as "an international leader in the environmental, social, and governance investment field."

Its ethics policy has strict guidelines against investing in companies that cause "serious violations of fundamental ethical norms," including "systematic human rights violations" and "violations of the rights of individuals in situations of war or conflict."

Following these guidelines, it has divested from some companies involved in the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine.

In 2009, it dropped Israel's largest arms company, Elbit Systems, due to its supplying of surveillance technology used to patrol the separation wall—commonly called the "apartheid wall"—fencing off the West Bank from Israel-proper.

And in 2024, following the International Court of Justice's advisory opinion that Israel was committing the crime of apartheid, it also cut off Bezeq, Israel's largest telecommunications company, which supplies telecommunications equipment to illegal West Bank settlements. It later did the same for the Israeli energy company Paz Retail and Energy Ltd.

However, as Amnesty described in May, the fund remains "invested in several companies listed in the U.N. database of businesses involved in the unlawful occupation of Palestine."

Last month, a report by Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, revealed that Norway's sovereign wealth fund had increased its investments in Israeli companies by 32% since October 2023.

Albanese found that 6.9% of its pension fund's total value was directed towards companies "involved in supporting or enabling egregious violations of international law in the occupied Palestinian territory."

In a letter to the Norwegian government sent in April, she listed dozens of investments: including Caterpillar, whose bulldozers have been used to destroy houses in the West Bank and attack Palestinians in Gaza; several Israeli banks that fund illegal settlements; and other military and technology firms like Hewlett-Packard and Motorola, whose technologies have been used for the purposes of surveillance and torture.

"I found Norwegian politicians, trade unions, media, and civil society to be generally more educated, aware, and principled about Palestine-Israel than many of their peers in Europe," Albanese wrote on X earlier this year. "That is why I can't believe the Norwegian Oil Fund and Pension Fund is still so involved in Israel's unlawful occupation. This must end, totally and unconditionally, like Israel's occupation itself—no more excuses."